On Anniversary of Baltimore Bridge Collapse, Study Says More Hits Coming

Days after the National Transportation Safety Board took state highway agencies to task for unassessed bridge strike risks, a team at Johns Hopkins University has published a comprehensive list of the bridge spans that are most exposed to the hazard. The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, which was struck and destroyed by the boxship Dali last year, emerged in the top-10 list for bridges most likely to be hit. 

“With this investigation we wanted to know if what happened to the Key Bridge was a rare occurrence. Was it an aberration? We found it’s really not,” said Michael Shields, Johns Hopkins associate professor and lead author. “In fact, it’s something we should expect to happen every few years.”

The study suggests that the likelihood of ships alliding with bridges has been greatly underestimated, and that we should all expect to see more bridge strikes in our lifetimes. Owing to the dramatic increase in the size of ships, and the fact that most bridges are witnessing an unprecedented increase in vessel traffic, future allisions are virtually certain – though the severity will vary, and there are engineering interventions to reduce harm. For example, the group calculated that the Huey P. Long Bridge outside New Orleans and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge are likely to be hit by a ship within two decades.

Johns Hopkins is releasing the preliminary findings of the study on the first anniversary of the Key Bridge collapse after it was struck by the boxship Dali, killing six people who were carrying out roadway repairs on the bridge deck. While investigations are still ongoing on the cause of the allision, the reality is that the chances of another similar incident are much higher. Ship strikes should be extremely rare, with bridge design standards stipulating that the annual chances